Carolein Smit

Carolein Smit (born 1960) is a Dutch ceramic art sculptor whose work often includes animals or skeletons.

Life and education Smit was born on 22 October 1960 in Amersfoort. She was educated at the AKV St. Joost in Breda from 1979 to 1984, studying graphics and lithography. For the next thirteen years she works as an illustration artist for various magazines and newspapers until a 3-months residency at the European Ceramic Work Center (ECWC) in Den Bosch in 1995 during which she falls in love with clay. As of this moment, she chooses ceramics as her favorite medium of expression and employs transgressive beauty that contradicts commonly held convictions about what makes something appealing. Her fascination with contrasts: the ugly but adorable, or the frightening but fragile, provides a reminder about the vulnerability and impermanence of life, and the inevitability of death.

Career Smit is known for figurative "enigmatic sculptures" depicting ceramic animals like dogs, hares or rats.

Several of Smit's works are in the collection of the Victoria and Albert Museum in London. In 2003, she had a solo exhibition at the Keramion, a ceramics museum and center in Frechen, Germany. and was the first major retrospective of her work. A review of the exhibition in Beelden Magazine stated that Smit produces "striking ceramic sculptures in which a bizarre baroque figuration results in contemporary, quirky images".

Technics Smit uses white clay that contains very little chamotte in order to avoid having a granular material on the surface of her works. The sculptures are hollow, with slabs of clay, and hand-modeled. Pieces like the hare with an umbrella and animals that have hair are all made separately by hand and added one by one. The pieces are very fragile when not yet fired at 1020 degrees, but relatively strong when glazed, as everything sticks with the glaze in between.

Cabinet of curiosities The cabinet of curiosities which has been considered as the first museum, was the place where the collectors showed their objects. The creation of Carolein Smit expresses her love for the cabinet of curiosities. She is involved with the multiple aspects shown in this type of collection which contains all images related to art but also to the scientific and other broader areas. Smit seeks to demonstrate in her ceramics this ambivalence that makes the viewer look with admire and disgust at the same time.

Bestiary The bestiary is the theme that often occurs in Smit's artworks. The dogs, rabbits, sheep, monkeys, owls, etc. are all given a glittering skin which makes them the unreal and attractive. Smit works also carefully with the details, like the eyes and the fur of her raptors, rats and pugs. In her exhibition at Musée de la Chasse et de la Nature in Paris, Dents ! Crocs ! Griffes !, her animals are being gathered and thus the visitors can see and "read" the bestiary of Carolein Smit. The cabinet of curiosities often included medical oddities, tumors, anatomical and pathological specimens. Inspired by this way of collecting and showing objects, Smit creates numerous skeletons and skinned figures as a demonstration of the combination of art and science.

Biblical Scenes Smit once said that not only she treated anatomical objects as source of her inspiration, but also she took regularly the devotion and biblical scenes as image for her ceramics. The figures can be monstrous and at the same time like someone coaxing and appealing. They are the talismans that keep us from misfortune and death.

Exhibitions Museum exhibitions

2022 Dents ! Crocs ! Griffes !, Musée de la Chasse et de la Nature à Paris, Paris, France Secret Garden, with Gebroeders Miedema, Stedelijk Museum Kampen, Netherlands

2021 Les Flammes : L'Âge de la Céramique, Musée d'Art Moderne de Paris, Paris, France

2020 Bye Bye Future! L'art de voyager dans le temps, Musée royal de Mariemont, Belgium

2019

Zarte Flügel, dicke Brummer, Museum Keramion, Frechen, Germany Raketstart, Stedelijk Museum Breda, Breda, Netherlands Drents Museum à Assen, Netherlands

2018 L'amour fou, Grassi Museum, Leipzig, Germany Myth and Mortality, The fairytale world of Carolein Smit, Victoria and Albert museum, London, United Kingdom

2016 Sexy Ceramics, Museum het Princessenhof, Leeuwarden, Netherlands Ceramix, Bonnefantenmuseum, Maastricht, Allemagne & La Maison Rouge, Paris, France

2015

Skeletten, Museum Beelden aan Zee, Scheveningen, Netherlands Queensize - Female Artists from the Olbricht Collection, Arnhems Museum, Netherlands

Exhibitions

2022 FRAGILES, Galerie Da-End, Paris, France Eden, James Freeman Gallery, Londres, United Kingdom Μέδουσα / Medusa, Galerie Da-End, Paris, France Bloodhound & Friends, Galerie Fontana, Amsterdam, Netherlands Cabinet de céramique contemporaine, Jonathan F. Kugel, Brussels, Belgium Cabinet Da-End XI - Asile in wonderland, Galerie Da-End, Paris, France

2021 Nyctophilia, James Freeman Gallery, Londres, United Kingdom Cabinet Da-End X, Galerie Da-End, Paris, France

2020 Beyond the vessel, Messums Wiltshire, Tisbury, United Kingdom Vanitas, Tiendschuur, Tegelen, Netherlands

2019 Beyond the vessel, Mesher, Istanbul, Turkey The child in me, Istanbul Biennale, Turkey Vanitas, Tiendschuur, Tegelen, Netherlands Galeristes, with Galerie Da-End, Carreau du Temple, Paris, France

2018 Carolein Smit and Ray Caesar, James Freeman Gallery, London, United Kingdom TEFAF, with Galerie Patrice Trigano de Paris (theme: The Body), Maastricht TEFAF, with Galerie Michael Haas de Berlin, Maastricht

2017 Paizô, duo show with Mike MacKeldey, Galerie Da-End, Paris, France Galeristes, with Galerie Da-End, Carreau du Temple, Paris, France Cabinet Da-End VII, Galerie Da-End, Paris, France Art Paris, avec Flatland Gallery d'Amsterdam, Paris, France First Biennale of De heilige Driehoek, Oosterhout, Pays-Bas

2016 Galeristes, with Galerie Da-End, Carreau du Temple, Paris, France Golem, Carolein Smit (Solo Show), Galerie Michèle Hayem, Paris, France Cabinet Da-End VI, Galerie Da-End, Paris, France Omnia vanitas, WCC-BF Gallery, Les Anciens Abattoirs, Mons, Belgique

2015 Lʼamour fou (Solo Show), Flatland Gallery, Amsterdam, Pays-Bas Objectif Terre, Biennale internationale de Céramique de Châteauroux, Châteauroux, France

Collections Grassimuseum, Leipzig, Germany Olbricht Collection, Germany Reydon Weiss Collection, Bremen, Germany Asante Collection, Basel, Switzerland Bouwfonds, Hoevelaken, Netherlands Knoll Design Nederland, Netherlands Interpolis, Tilburg, Netherlands FSGroep, Hilversum, Netherlands Collection Eneco Energie, Rotterdam, Netherlands Collection J. Schwartz, New York, USA Victoria and Albert Museum, London, United Kingdom Badisches Landesmuseum, Karlsruhe, Germany Scheringa Museum for Realism, Spanbroek, Netherlands Museum Beelden aan Zee, Scheveningen, Netherlands Fuled International Museum (FLICAM) Fuping, China Drents Museum, Assen, Netherlands Collection Ömer Koç, Istanbul, Turkey Source: